No nukes, pls, here’s Akhand Bharat

ABRACADABRA/ SHUBHRANGSHU ROY, TNNJun 5, 2002, 12.51am IST

When Pakistan high commissioner Ashraf Jehangir Qazi left for his country last fortnight after a five-year stint in Delhi, he took with him his best kept-secret, unknown to the Page 3 crowd he hob-nobbed with so heartily in the capital and unknown to sundry Kashmir secessionist leaders he promoted so vigorously for their anti-India campaign.

For decades, Qazi's in-laws have been waging an unsuccessful secessionist campaign against Pakistan. His sister is wedded to the Mari tribe of Baluchistan whose elders have been frequently incarcerated by successive Pakistani governments because they want to be free.

The younger tribe members are spread out across Europe so that they can escape the fate of their elders.

I am sure the mandarins on Raisina Hill are aware of this little secret. For, on and off, the Baluchis have approached our government for finance and material help to sustain their "freedom struggle" much in the same manner that Islamabad supports "freedom fighters" in Kashmir.

But unlike Pakistan's involvement in Kashmir or our own intervention in the Bangladesh 30 years ago, India has refrained from dirtying its hands in Baluchi sand. I don't know exactly why this has been so, but I guess there's a good enough reason.

India succeeded in Bangladesh because the Bengali population was divided between India and Pakistan and India could instigate the Bangladeshis to revolt against their Punjabi overlords with whom they had very little in common.

Pakistan too seems to be succeeding in a divided Kashmir as those in our part of the territory identify themselves more closely with their kin across the border.

India has no such luck with the Baluchis who are spread out across Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran and share little in common with India.

The same is true for Pashtuns in Pakistan's northwest frontier who have been demanding a separate homeland for long. That's also reason why the Pakistanis, despite their reported on-off involvement with secessionists in India's northeast corner, have failed to create nuisance so far away from their border.

When a third country intervenes in the nationalistic aspirations of an indigenous people, mere instigation to revolt doesn't work. There's need for a common cause it can share with those people.

So, Baluchistan remains out of India's gameplan. So, Mizoram and Nagaland can't fit into Pakistan's gameplan. Yet, like Bangladesh did for India three decades ago, Kashmir holds maximum nuisance value for Pakistan today. That's the only reason they are there.

Pakistan knows this well. India too understands this better. So, Pakistan seems to succeed where India seems to flounder. And Kashmir's separatist agitation acquires a ring of legitimacy around it never mind what our leaders have to say.

That's reason why India complains it's had enough of Pakistani terror but Pakistan feels it has plenty more to offer. So now you know why a million armed people are sitting it out swearing at each other across a volatile border — just in case it's time to prove who's the real winner.

The problem is, wars don't make real winners.

You don't need to be a military strategist to predict that wars don't win peoples' hearts. They estrange them further.

So irrespective of how many nukes India and Pakistan can throw at each other, the wounds of Kashmir and Baluchistan will continue to fester for long. Provided they aren't bombed out first.

So, how do we get out of this mess we have brought upon ourselves? How do we get away from proving on ground what really makes India, what makes Pakistan?

There can't be an emotional solution to this tangle, I suppose. For you can't just draw up a map to prove who's right, who's wrong. India, as we know it, and Pakistan, as they know it, is neither our nor their creation.

They are simple watermarks our colonisers bequeathed to us. Pakistan or should I say India or should I even say the entire landmass that goes for South Asia to the rest of the world is made up of several nations within nations.

It's always been so. They have come in as many shapes and sizes that conquerors' swords could carve up over the years.

So, why permanently hold on to what's been transient always? It's time we shed our emotional baggage. How do we make that happen? By letting the people go free.

Let there be as many nations across the whole of South Asia as their peoples' aspirations want them to be. Europe was carved up for centuries before it merged into a common market where people, irrespective of their nationalities, could prosper.

It's time we shed our animosities of the past and help rebuild our little corner of this world.

That's how we can get Akhand Bharat going. Are you willing to join in that effort?